This post is part of a new summer 2017 “DIY” (do-it-yourself) series by House Divided Project interns Rachel Morgan and Sam Weisman on how to make various types of primary source facsimiles; see posts on CDVs, stereocards, colorized photos, and letters.

On a camping trip for the first time, a student in my mother’s fifth grade class exclaimed that he was surprised the great outdoors “wasn’t all black and white”. The student, raised on video games and smart phones, thought of nature as old-timey, flat. If the vibrant colors and sounds of nature seemed “black and white” to the student, how could the black and white photograph of a moment ever connect?

You take in a black and white photograph all at once. A captivating video by Vox explains how adding a little color helps a viewer relate to the details – familiar denim pants or a cherry red Cola. Among a collection of black and white photos, just one flash of color can help students think differently about the rest. Familiar scenes from the Civil War come to life in color.

A color photograph looks like a slice of reality to the viewer, but the artist knows better. The image is an interpretation of the past: art, not reproduction. Artists run into issues if they present an updated photo as authentic and fail to credit the original artist. Professional color artists debated how to present recolored images in this insightful piece. Students should be able to recognize that the new colors are not necessarily correct. If you are going to colorize Civil War era images, and especially if you post them online, make sure to clearly credit the original photograph and explain that you modified the new one. As always, make sure the image is credited for reuse. A “before and after” comparison proves very transparent, because the viewer can compare the artists work with the original. Being open about a colorized image does not make it less teachable. Students may look at black and white images differently if they imagine the alternative colors in the scene. See some good examples of how to present such work from the coverage by the Daily Mail and here from Time magazine in 2013 when new digital technologies helped make colorizing easier.

I learned how to colorize this summer and then made my first recolored photo in about an hour . With a few simple Photoshop tricks, vibrant color photos of history can be regular features in the classroom.

The quickest way to recolor a photo is essentially one of the oldest. In the 1890s, photographers tinted sections of their photo negatives and then layered them by color. The layer technique on Photoshop imitates this “photochrom” process for a quick and easy recolor. It is perfect for classroom use but only the tip of the iceberg in the art of recoloring.

I learned how to colorize photos from this tutorial by the Photoshop Video Academy:

Bear in mind – colorization works best with a large, high-res image. Color brings out detail, and this is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to old, maybe damaged images. The best parts of the photograph will be more vivid but so will the blurry or unclear elements. Even with a high quality image, it may be difficult to decide what color to use. Shadows and camera angles can obscure parts of a picture. Your impulse may be to zoom in very close to seamlessly select parts of the photo. This is essential, but make sure you regularly zoom out to get the big picture. Notice my subject’s left hand in the color image below. Up close, this seemed like a shadow but zooming out on the original image, I recognized fingers. Keep the original picture open in a different tab so you can flip back and forth.

From the Autobiography of Moncure Conway

I started off with this portrait. The background and lighting are simple. Also, the face and hands make up a relatively small part of the image. Human skin tones are very difficult to get right and are one of the more noticeable differences if you get them wrong. Textiles are much easier. From my experience, I find full-body images easier to recolor than facial details or group photographs.

Modified by Sam Weisman

Where possible, use historical records or period models for color inspiration. Expert color artists will obsessively research to find the right colors for their subjects’ clothes but for classroom purposes, imagination and an educated guess can still make for a convincing photograph. I had no reason to believe my subject’s shirt was red, for example. Google “Lincoln in color” to see how many different ways artists have interpreted the same portrait.

The blacks and whites in old photographs do not carry over well into color. In fact, they fall on the spectrum of gray. So, even if part of an image will remain white or black in the finished product, it should still be recolored. For example, I tinted my subject’s coat a very dark blue so the color was consistent with the richer tone of the new image.

Try to keep the colors muted. An overzealous recoloring job will stand out. Compare your work with other colorized photographs, or even modern photographs of period artifacts.

All of these details will “unflatten” a black and white photograph. Maybe a student will discover that old photos weren’t so flat to begin with. Or, like Dorothy opening her door into the land of Oz, color will reveal a new world.

This post is part of a new summer 2017 “DIY” (do-it-yourself) series by House Divided Project interns Rachel Morgan and Sam Weisman on how to make various types of primary source facsimiles; see posts on CDVs, stereocards, colorized photos, and letters.

If you mention MySpace, you just dated yourself. Believe it or not, fads in social networking gave away their times just as easily 150 years ago. “Carte de visites” (CDV) were a mid-nineteenth century phenomenon like Facebook or Instagram. These portrait cards captured the nation in “cardomania”. Photography itself dates in the United States from the 1830s and 1840s, but early daguerreotypes were expensive and rare. By the late 1850s, the widespread emergence of printed photographic cards, CDVs, allowed friends and family to share their images with each other in relatively inexpensive ways. They often used the CDVs to create albums that, in effect, marked the boundaries of their social network.

This summer, I made several CDV printouts for classroom use. I found woodcut portraits and newspaper photographs to make CDVs. Then, I added some teaser introductions. When visitors enter the House Divided studio, they can pick up a CDV and find their subject in the exhibit.

I used Photoshop to make these CDVs but Microsoft Word works just as well on a budget.

A CDV can easily be adopted into a cabinet card and vise versa just by resizing and adding the photographer’s information. With some period costumes, students could even make their own CDVs or cabinet cards.

In 1895, the Chicago Times-Herald launched a series of recollected accounts about Abraham Lincoln which the editors claimed would introduce new elements to the Lincoln story. These rare recollections have never since been republished as part of their own series, but modern scholars have used some of them to powerful effect. However, this summer, student interns from the House Divided Project are busy scanning, transcribing and preparing this series for free distribution on the web. Today, we are posting just one of these recollections, an account from John E. Roll, a carpenter who knew Lincoln from New Salem days and also claimed to have heard him say during the famous “House Divided” speech (June 16, 1858), that, “I used to be a slave.” This last comment has taken on some real importance in modern years, employed in various books by some leading scholars, including Michael Burlingame and Allen Guelzo, and also, most recently, by journalist Sidney Blumenthal who is using that quotation to help open his projected four-volume biography of Lincoln. The decision raises many interesting questions about historical method, but for now, we thought it would help teachers and students to see for themselves the full transcript of Roll’s original account here. What follows below appeared in the Chicago Times-Herald on August 25, 1895 (transcribed by Trevor Diamond, Class of 2017):

John E. Roll

John E. Roll is celebrated, among other things, as having assisted Abraham Lincoln in the construction of the flat boat with which the tall Kentuckian made his first trip from Salem, Ill., to New Orleans, in 1831.

“I knew him when he was 22 years old,” said Mr. Roll. “He came down here to Sangamontown and worked in the timber building a flat boat for Orfutt & Greene, who were merchants and shippers. Sangamntown was then quite a place. There were two stores, a steam saw mill and a grist-mill, a tavern and a carding mill. I have seen fifty horses hitched there of a Saturday afternoon. Now there is not a stick to mark the place. The roads are cut out, so you can’t get to it without going across the fields.

They built the boat up there because there was better timber, and were going to take it down and load at Petersburg. Charles Broadwell had a sawmill at Sangamontown, and Lincoln was there bossing the job. I came along and wanted work, and he hired me, and I made the pins for the boat. We launched here there, and she got a good deal of water in herm and we got her down as far as Salem dam, and there she was stuck, with her bow over the dam. And Lincoln bored a hole in the bottom of the boat, and let the water out. Looks like a funny way to get water out of a boat, to bore a hole in the bottom, but if the bottom is sticking out in the air, it is all right, I guess.

Lincoln was an awful clumsy looking man at that time. He wore a homespun suit of clothes, and a big pair of cowhide boots, with his trousers strapped down under them, as was the custom of that day, to keep them from crawling up his legs. And his coat was a roundabout, and when he stooped over his work we could see about four inches of his suspenders. He had on an old slouch wool hat. He was getting $15 a month from Offutt & Greene at that time.

After we got the flatboat launched we went out in the timber and found a good tree, and made a canoe. John Seaman and Walter Carman were along and they wanted to have the first ride in the canoe, and they jumped in, and the water was very high and swift and they tipped over and were in danger of drowning. The whole bottom was overflowed and there was a big elm tree standing about 100 feet from the shore, with its branches in the water, and Lincoln called to them to swim to the tree, and hold on there till we could get them. So they caught the branches, and got up in the tree. It was in March and the water was very cold. So we got a log and tied a rope to it and James Doyle got on the log and tried to get to them but the log turned over with him and he had to get in the tree with the other two.

Then we pulled the log ashore and Lincoln got straddle of it, and the rest of us paid out the rope and let him down toward the tree, and he got to them and took them off and brought them ashore.

After that he went on and loaded his boat with corn at Petersburg, and went down the river to New Orleans. I don’t know how he got back but I have an idea he walked back though he may have come back by steamboat. He worked a while for Offutt & Greene in their store at Salem, and then he bought it out, and afterward he sold it and came here to Springfield and wen to practicing law.

All the time he was running the store he had been studying law. He would walk up here to Springfield, twenty miles, and borrow books from Major Stuart and read them, and bring them back. He didn’t seem to be much of a speaker, but it seemed he could do whatever he started to do.

I had come up here to Springfield as soon as I got through the job on the flatboat and was working at the plastering trade when he moved up here. One time I remember I saw him out here on the Salem road walking along and reading one book, with another under his arm. He got tired and sat down on a log to rest. And while he rested he went on reading.

I put my money in land as fast as I made it and was worth a good deal of money. Lincoln and I were always good friends. One time Tom Lewis and I were standing and talking on the street and Tom said: ‘John, why don’t you run for some office? You’ve got so many tenants you could make them elect you.’ And I said I didn’t want no office till Abe Lincoln was elected President of the United States, and then I would expect him to give me an office because I had worked with him on the flat boat. And Lincoln came along just then—it was long before he had ever been mentioned for President, and Tom told him what I had said. And Lincoln laughed and said when hot to be President he would give me an office.

So I was the first man he ever promised an office to, but I never got it. Oh, yes I was making more money then than any office was worth. I wouldn’t have had any office. I didn’t want any.

I remember one time in a speech he made at the courthouse, that time he said the country could not live half slave and half free, he said we were all slaves one time or another, but that white men could make themselves free and the negroes could not. He said: “There is my old friend John Roll. He used to be a slave, but he made himself free, and I used to be a slave, and now I am so free that they let me practice law.’ I remember that.”

Editor’s Note: There has been an avalanche of important new scholarship on the Underground Railroad over the last twenty years, and yet there remains a critical gap in the literature. Scholars know comparatively little about the slave catchers (or kidnappers) who chased after the fugitives (or freedom seekers). This is a challenge that Maryland historian Milt Diggins has tackled in an important new biography of Thomas McCreary, who spearheaded slave-catching operations along the Mason-Dixon Line during the antebellum period. Teachers and students should know more about such men and their methods and so we asked Diggins to share a post at Blog Divided that would help highlight the main insights of his book, which can be purchased from the Maryland Historical Society or at other online retailers such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Guest post by Milt Diggins

In 2007, while serving as volunteer editor for the Historical Society of Cecil County in Elkton, I came across a nineteenth century newspaper article that caught my attention. Fredrick Douglass referred to “Thomas McCreary, the notorious kidnapper from Elkton.” No one at the historical society had ever heard of McCreary, and apparently neither did anyone else in the county. Ask people to name a slave catcher and kidnapper and many could name Patty Cannon. The story of the infamous Cannon-Johnson gang is encrusted with local myth, but remove the layers of folklore and history will still reveal a formidable gang of kidnappers with a deserved reputation for viciousness. But why did Douglass call McCreary a notorious kidnapper? That question, and the questions that followed, drove seven years of research and writing. Patty Cannon may be better known, but reconstructing the story of the once notorious but nearly forgotten Thomas McCreary reveals him to be a more significant figure for examining the controversy over slave catching and kidnapping.

One reason for McCreary’s historical importance was the time period in which he gained notoriety. Cannon died in prison in 1829. The debate in Congress over the abolition of slavery heated up in the 1830s. The Prigg vs Pennsylvania decision in 1842 proclaimed the constitutional right of slave catchers to capture suspected fugitives without hindrance by state governments, a guiding principle for slave catchers and kidnappers like McCreary. Northern states attempted to provide some protection for citizens of color through personal liberty laws, like Pennsylvania’s, revised and enacted in 1847. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 increased federal responsibility for recovering escaped slaves by authorizing US circuit court commissioners to try fugitive cases. The most violent reaction to that law occurred at Christiana, Pennsylvania, one decade before the outbreak of the Civil War. McCreary operated within this series of events, and his actions were shaped by them. His activities added fuel to the animosity between Maryland and Pennsylvania over the slavery issue and the distinction between slave catching and kidnapping.

McCreary benefitted from the support of his community, adding a second dimension missing in the story of the Cannon-Johnson gang. Proslavery advocates prized his forays into Pennsylvania and his prowess for capturing accused runaway slaves. Local newspapers praised McCreary as Elkton’s hometown hero. The editors defended his “arrests” to counter criticism from Pennsylvanians, and from Delawareans, most notably Thomas Garrett, and the editors of the Blue Hens Chicken, an antislavery newspaper.

McCreary’s relationship with the political elite is a third reason for his significance. McCreary was deeply in debt when the county declared him insolvent in December, 1838. Two months later, the governor appointed him to a state position in Elkton, an indication that McCreary had found favor with Cecil County’s political bosses. In time that local political connection would extend to the state level. These political relationships would work to McCreary’s advantage.

Patty Cannon’s villainy was widely recognized. Opinions divided over McCreary, mirroring the growing national divide. Elevated to the status of state hero, McCreary represented Maryland’s insistence on the unrestricted right of slave catchers to seize blacks in Northern states and force them into the hands of slaveholders. Whereas opponents criticized McCreary’s questionable slave catching tactics and condemned him for obvious kidnappings, proslavery Marylanders valued McCreary as an effective slave catcher. In their view, it was politically impossible for him to be a kidnapper, no matter what the likes of abolitionists like Fredrick Douglass or Thomas Garrett said, or what a Pennsylvania jury might have said if given the chance.

This photo of a newly discovered Lincoln letter (provided by the Papers of Abraham Lincoln project) provoked scholars to wonder why there is a section mysteriously clipped out

Last Friday, the Associated Press reported on the discovery of a previously unknown Abraham Lincoln document, and with it, a puzzling mystery. Addressed only to “My dear Sir,” a portion of the letter had been carefully removed, eliminating the key to understanding its meaning. Lincoln appears to have been writing “in haste” to someone asking if he or she could “keep up a correspondence” with an unknown person. “I like to know his views occasionally,” Lincoln wrote. Researchers at the Papers of Abraham Lincoln project focused on the peculiar phrase, “keep up a correspondence,” and ran it through their database, matching it to a letter written to Lincoln by fellow Republican Leonard Swett in June 1860. In his note, Swett mentioned that he would “try to keep up a correspondence during the Campaign” with “our friend T W of Albany.” Researchers believe these initials refers to Thurlow Weed, the powerful editor of the Albany Evening Journal, a leading Republican newspaper from New York. During that period, Weed was essentially serving as a campaign manager for New York senator William Henry Seward, whom Lincoln had just defeated for the Republican presidential nomination in May 1860. Candidate Lincoln needed full backing from Seward, Weed and their various supporters in the upcoming election but worried that he might not receive it because they were so disappointed over Seward’s unexpected defeat. This would explain why Lincoln and Swett wanted to keep close tabs on Weed and his views and why Lincoln may have sent the mysterious letter featured above.

New letters and documents relating to Abraham Lincoln turn up more frequently than you might realize. Just a few weeks ago for Time magazine, House Divided Project director Matthew Pinsker highlighted some recent discoveries that give us powerful new insights into Lincoln. In 2008, scholars revealed that Lincoln had once fired off an angry letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune which belittled another Republican politician as “Sister Burlingame” and which Pinsker calls “the angriest, nastiest written statement Lincoln ever produced.” Another newly discovered letter from 1859 reveals that Lincoln privately called slavery the only “living issue of the day” and wrote that it would be “idiotic” to think otherwise. Pinsker also points out that even something as monumental as the transcript for Lincoln’s very first national speech (1847) has only just recently been made available to scholars.

For teachers and students using our Lincoln’s Writings: The Multi-Media Edition site, we’ve added a new tool to help you examine some of the best of these recent documents for yourself. Under the “Special Topics” heading, which can be found in the right-hand sidebar of every page, there is a link to “recently discovered documents.” As you browse each of these documents, you can also use the tags at the bottom of each page to find other related materials.

In your quest for new Lincoln materials, however, always keep in mind that there are sometimes Lincoln forgeries in circulation, especially over the Internet. This problem has even fooled us before. Just remember that the most reputable sources for Lincoln documents remain the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln and the Papers of Abraham Lincoln. And, of course, we’ll do our best to help navigate the truth as well.

In the excitement over the new “Lincoln” movie and Daniel Day-Lewis’s Oscar-winning and truly mesmerizing performance as Abraham Lincoln, it is easy to overlook one of the very best sources of information on Lincoln’s life –Lincoln himself. Abraham Lincoln never kept a diary or wrote a memoir, but he did craft a few, brief autobiographical sketches. The most important of these efforts came in December 1859 at the request of a Pennsylvania newspaper (Chester County Times) that was preparing a series on potential Republican nominees for president in 1860. Joseph J. Lewis, publisher of the Chester Times asked a mutual friend, Bloomington, Illinois attorney (and Pennsylvania native) Jesse W. Fell, to approach Lincoln for information that could be used to craft a profile.

What Lincoln produced was a 600-word document that reveals a striking amount about his background and style. You can access a written transcript of the sketch (along with the equally revealing cover letter to Fell, where Honest Abe states confidentially, “Of course it must not appear to have been written by myself.”) along with a special audio version of the documents created for the House Divided Project by noted actor and Dickinson College theatre professor Todd Wronski. [NOTE: Just right-click on this audio link and select “Save Link As…” in order to download the audio file to your computer / network).

For a Common Core-aligned assignment, students should read and listen to Lincoln’s autobiographical sketch and prepare a short informational essay that summarizes Lincoln’s life story using Lincoln’s own words. After they have completed their essays and discussed them in class, teachers should show clips from Matthew Pinsker’s college-level discussion of Lincoln’s autobiographical sketch, which was filmed by C-SPAN’s American History TVcontinue reading "Teaching Lincoln’s Autobiography in the Common Core"

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Last week, sadly, we discovered that there was a forged document in the House Divided research engine. David Gerleman from the Papers of Abraham Lincoln contacted us to point out that a letter supposedly written by Abraham Lincoln to Georgia politician (and future Confederate Vice President) Alexander Stephens, dated January 19, 1860, was a known Lincoln forgery. The letter (since removed) was full of memorable and sometimes unLincolnian statements about the sectional crisis and ended with the line: “This is the longest letter I ever dictated or wrote.” Since Lincoln was not in the habit of dictating anything at all (especially in those pre-presidential days), this was a document that should have set off warning bells. But it was published as part of a pamphlet that had been produced during the centennial of Lincoln’s birth in 1909 and even now remains in wide circulation on the Internet and elsewhere. A recent scholarly article in the Tulane Law Review by John Inazu (“The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly” 2010) even began by quoting from it. Yet there was no such exchange with Stephens. For a full discussion of the problems with the alleged January 19, 1860 document, see the article, “Four Spurious Lincoln Letters” in the Bulletin of the Abraham Lincoln Association 21 (Dec. 1930): 5-9, available online here). You can view the text of the forged document at the Internet Archive (where we apparently found it) inside a pamphlet edited by noted Lincoln collector Judd Stewart and entitled, Some Lincoln Correspondence with Southern Leaders Before the Outbreak of the Civil War (1909). Stewart was one of the so-called “Big Five” of early Lincoln collectors and was careless enough to fall victim to these types of scams (his collection, stripped of several other faked items, is now housed at the Huntington Library in California). During the decades after Lincoln’s assassination, there was practically a land office business in Lincoln forgeries, and their ripple effects are still being felt today. I exposed one of these problems in 1999 when actor Warren Beatty and journalist Jonathan Alter used a phony Lincoln quotation about the evils of big corporations that had originally been ginned up during the Populist era and continues to be quoted and re-quoted today despite numerous debunkings. History News Network reprinted the piece in 2005 when author Kevin Phillips and historian Paul Kennedy both made the same mistake of admiring a Lincoln who sounded suspiciously like William Jennings Bryan. What’s the lesson in all this for teachers and students? Check your sources. We never should have used a 1909 pamphlet for a Lincoln document when the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (8 vols., 1953; 1974, 1990) is the current gold standard in Lincoln’s writings (though the online Papers of Abraham Lincoln, where Gerleman works, will soon become the new AAA-rated repository for all things Lincolniana). And always remember, when a story or document seems too “good” to be true … it just very well might be.

One hundred fifty years ago todayJames Buchanan was at his home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and wrote a letter to New York Herald editor James Gordon Bennett in which he reflected on his administration. The Herald, as Buchanan explained, had provided “able & powerful support…almost universally throughout my stormy and turbulent administration.” Yet overall Buchanan saw his administration as a success. “Under Heaven’s blessing the administration has been eminently successful in its foreign & domestic policy,” Buchanan noted. As for “the sad events which have recently occurred” during the secession crisis, Buchanan argued that “no human wisdom could have prevented” them. While “I feel conscious that I have done my duty,” Buchanan acknowledged that it “will be for the public & posterity to judge” if he had provided “wise & peaceful direction towards the preservation or reconstruction of the union.” After the Civil War, Buchanan continued to defend his administration’s policies in Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion (1866).

One hundred fifty years ago todayAbraham Lincoln became the sixteenth President of the United States. After he delivered his Inaugural Address from the central portico of the U.S. Capitol, Chief Justice Roger Taney administered the oath of office. Newspapers throughout the country published Lincoln’s speech and debated what it meant for the future of the country. The New York Times, which supported the Republican party, argued that Lincoln had been “highly conciliatory towards all who have been led to entertain unjust and unfounded apprehensions” about the new administration. Other Republican papers such as the Cleveland (OH) Herald also praised the speech. “The Inaugural of President Lincoln will take its place in history as one of the most remarkable state papers of the present age,” as the Heraldexplained. In addition, the Herald believed that “the Union men of the South cannot fail to be pleased” since Lincoln had indicated that “the constitutional rights of each section of the Union shall be respected and protected. ” One southern unionist newspaper, the Fayetteville (NC) Observer, noted that “there is much in Mr. Lincoln’s words to assure the South that it need anticipate no violation of its rights from his administration.” The Observer argued that President Lincoln would not “resort to ‘coercion’” because “it would be the maddest of follies.” Some southern editors, however, were accused of distorting the text of the speech in an attempt to support secessionists. While the Republican editor of the Chicago (IL) Tribune knew from experience that “a long document [rarely] is transmitted over the wires without undergoing more or less transformation,” Joseph Medillbelieved in this case that some editors had deliberately included errors. “Evidently the conductors of the secession press are unwilling that the people whom they have hurried into rebellion without a cause, shall have the opportunity of learning the truth,” as Medill concluded. You can read more about Lincoln’s Inaugural Address in chapter 3 of Douglas L. Wilson’s Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words (2006) and chapter 20 of Michael Burlingame’s Abraham Lincoln: A Life (2008).

The 150th anniversary of President-Elect Lincoln‘s tense arrival in Washington has provoked several evocative blog posts.

Ted Widmer, director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, provides a comprehensive decscription about Lincoln’s travels for the “Disunion” blog at the New York Times. Through several posts (see especially 2/10, 2/21 and 2/22) Widmer traces the route from Springfield to Washington and illustrates the ups and downs of the emotional journey. Though Lincoln never wrote about this trip, his secretary John Nicolay conveyed the following:

“It is hard for anyone who had not had the chance of personal observation to realize the mingled excitement and apprehension, elation and fatigue which Mr. Lincoln… underwent… during this memorable trip from Springfield to Washington.”

Historian Harold Holzer also authored a vivid post for “Disunion” on the anniversary of the President-Elect’s arrival in Washington. Holzer gathers inspiration from the close parallels between Lincoln’s trip and President Obama’s recent pre-inaugural journey. However, he says, “Most Americans overlooked a critical historical irony.” President-elect Obama enjoyed record-breaking crowds on the way to his inauguration while president-elect Lincoln was met by a single friend. “Lincoln made the final leg of his journey in total secrecy,” Holzer writes, “in the dead of night, disguised to avoid detection and at one point sleeping near a woman who was not his wife.”